Monday's class was a wonderful session because it was an insight into what librarians can offer teachers. For one, it seems that quite a few of them have teaching experience and knowledge of vast amount of resources that are high school appropriate. Having been in college the last four years, the search engines that I have used have been upgraded to more "college-level" articles, so I couldn't remember how to search for articles more suitable for high school students. Monday's class was the weekly reminder that secondary education is not about what I know; it's what the students know.
Monday's class was also an experiment in collaborative planning for teachers. Queequeg and I worked together in order to construct a lesson plan around the tsunami that hit Japan this past March. In the beginning we were both unsure about what we wanted to do and how to do it. However, as the session progressed we ran the gamut on Bloom's Taxonomy - that's right we went meta-cognitive. We designed a lesson plan that would span a couple of classes where students would read both news articles and personal memoirs (memoirs of those in Japan during the tsunami) of the tsunami. From there, the students would identify the characteristics of both expository and narrative styles in order to better understand these forms of writings as well as learning about the tragedy. Then, we would ask the students to construct an essay comparing the different styles of writing - concluding their analytical essay with how these different mediums affected them and shaped their interpretation of the event. While this is a very watered down version of what we talked about, by the end, our lesson was geared toward teaching students how to use databases to find resources, practice reading, learning different writing styles, working on their own writing, learning about natural disasters and their effects, as well as self knowledge regarding what kind of writing they gravitate toward to. All of this was constructed in only an hour and a half. Although, we didn't finish the resources provided by Queequeeg an the librarians were more than I could ever ask for.
In my previous blog, I mentioned that this was my first 'real' step towards becoming a teacher, and I have to say I think it was successful. I felt truly like a professional. Even though the librarians filled in gaps like how much time something might take or what resources to use, I realized that in the past four weeks that I have learned a ton about education, and I have a fair of knowledge about lesson planning. A lot of smack has been talk about how intensive the SMAC program is, but I can see why, and I think it's not only preparing us as educators but as professionals.
Thank you for this thoughtful post. I was thrilled to read that you felt the exercise had helped you feel like a professional. It will be interesting to hear what else, as you go through MAC, helps you feel like a professional and how, if at all, it differs from how you see yourself as an educator, Ahab.
ReplyDelete